# No-Strike Clauses in Union Contracts - An Opinion
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [October 3, 2001, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231 "2001-10-03T19:28:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/41 "2001-10-05T16:35:47Z")
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> Strikebreaking benefits the company no matter what the principles behind it. No-strike clauses give the company just as much benefit. Whether or not the union “failed to represent the workers”, measures that benefit the company should be fought against.
Strikebreaking does not “benefit” the company. What would benefit the company is not striking in the first place.
Look, the company represents itself. The union represents the workers. if there is a problem with a contract, it lies with the union that accepted it. The best way to “strike” against the union is to stop paying union dues. If there is a problem with an implementation of the contract, that lies with the party which implements it incorrectly. If that is the company, sure they can strike. If that is an employee, sure they can get fired.
I guess I just don’t understand what it means to automatically hate business. I see both the market and labor as an unfortunate necessity in a utopia where everything is free and infinite, except possibly time. I really don’t understand this labor value debate. Value comes from the individual who wants to buy it, period. All the labor in the world doesn’t mean shit if no one is buying. All the companies in the world don’t create value if no one wants their product. You think your labor is worth 15 bucks an hour? Fine, then go work for yourself— We’re hiring at $10. You think that shovel is worth $25? Then you can sell it to yourself at that price because I don’t agree, and I don’t care how many ditches you’ve dug with it, or how many people sweat blood and tears to construct it. _I simply don’t want it_.
Tell me again how things get value from labor?
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### Author:  [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/42 "2001-10-05T16:42:53Z")
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> \*Originally posted by SuaSponte \*
> **You appear to have forgotten that union members are people, with minor distractions like, oh, paying rent, buying their kids clothes, and putting food on the table to consider. The money to do such things isn’t coming in when the union members are on strike.**
No, that’s true. Which is why support needs to be organized among the families and friends of the striking members so that their burden isn’t as hard. Furthermore, a successful strike means that those same workers are now better able to meet their own financial needs because they’ve won higher pay (if that’s one of their demands).
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> **Fer chrissakes, most people in this country live from paycheck to paycheck. Strikes should only be contemplated when the alternative is worse.**
I’m quite aware of what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck, thank you very much. I certainly don’t think the bills I’m behind on now are going to be magically caught up or deferred if I ever went on strike.
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> **Union leaders who put the lovely political goals of militancy and organizing ahead of the needs of union members ought to be replaced, and quickly.**
Militancy and organization are the key for union members to figure out how they can fight to get the company they work for to better meet their needs. Passivity and disorganization don’t get people raises and/or shorter, safer working hours.
Bosses are afraid of strikes because it cuts into their profits. Workers shouldn’t be.
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### Author:  [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/43 "2001-10-05T17:15:10Z")
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> \*Originally posted by erislover \*
> **Strikebreaking does not “benefit” the company. What would benefit the company is not striking in the first place.**
What’s the common point between them? Workers at the machinery, producing goods for sale and thereby creating profits. Strikes interrupt the flow of production and threaten profits. Anything that goes towards stopping that interruption benefits the company.
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> **Look, the company represents itself. The union represents the workers. if there is a problem with a contract, it lies with the union that accepted it.**
How are conditions proposed by the company, which are unacceptable to the union, the union’s fault? How is it their fault if they ultimately have no other choice but to accept those conditions? Conversely, if the union had the opportunity to successfully challenge those conditions and the leadership did not avail themselves of it, I’d definitely blame the union. But if those efforts were not successful and they had to swallow an unacceptable contract, I don’t blame the unions at all.
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> **The best way to “strike” against the union is to stop paying union dues.**
Which leaves the workers with no organization and increasingly more passive. The best way to strike against the union is to campaign for more democracy inside it and to build a rank-and-file that is not afraid to take matters into its own hands if the union leadership isn’t doing what they want.
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> **I guess I just don’t understand what it means to automatically hate business.**
I guess I don’t understand what it means to automatically hate unions, either.
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> **Value comes from the individual who wants to buy it, period. All the labor in the world doesn’t mean shit if no one is buying. All the companies in the world don’t create value if no one wants their product.**
Wrong. The value isn’t realized if no one is buying, but the value is there nonetheless because labor was used to produce it. Again, there are two kinds of value - economic value and use-value. Objects inherently have use-value; they can be used for one purpose or another, like creating something else, or as food. But they must be made from raw materials first - like the example of the shovel - so use-value comes from labor. Same with food. It must be grown or cultivated or fed before it can be eaten.
Same with economic value. Labor is required to make the goods to be sold, and that labor must be paid. The money paid out to labor must be recouped, as well as money for other expenses (which in turn require labor to be fulfilled) - and over all that, profits must be realized. But those goods cannot be sold for a price if they’re not made in the first place. Hence labor creates value.
Use-value stems directly from labor. Value stems from the way in which labor is organized for production. No matter how labor is organized, objects have use-value - but economic value is only created if objects are treated as commodities, as sources of profit, and labor is organized in order to generate profit.
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> **You think your labor is worth 15 bucks an hour? Fine, then go work for yourself? We’re hiring at $10.**
Actually, I’d rather get a union in your workplace and organize a strike for $15 an hour.
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### Author:  [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/44 "2001-10-05T19:38:15Z")
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> \*Originally posted by Olentzero \*
> Bosses are afraid of strikes because it cuts into their profits. Workers shouldn’t be.
Hmm, bosses should be afraid of strikes - because they will lose money. But, according to you, workers shouldn’t be afraid of strikes - even though they will also lose money. Doesn’t compute.
In reality, everyone involved should be afraid of strikes. They are the nuclear weapon of labor relations, and the fallout can affect both sides. Back in 1988, employees at Eastern Airlines went on strike. As a direct result, the company went bankrupt and everybody - management and labor alike - lost their jobs.
Don’t get me wrong - I have no problems with strikes _per se_. I can personally tell you that the threat of a strike is a damn useful tool when negotiating with management. I just think that your attitude towards them is waaaaaaay too cavalier.
Strikes:
1. **will** , at least in the short term, have profoundly negative economic effects on the striking workers. Aid from family and friends may help, and that is a common technique used in strikes, but such aid rarely covers all of a workers’ obligations; and
2. simply may not work. If you go out demanding a 10% pay raise, you can afford (assuming a one-year contract) to be out around 4 weeks without losing money in the long term. If, at the end of the 4 weeks, you end up settling for anything less than 10%, the union members have lost money on the strike. Or, as in the Eastern Airlines example, you may drive the company out of business.
Sua
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### Author:  [@Spiritus\_Mundi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiritus_Mundi)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/45 "2001-10-05T20:07:02Z")
**Olentzero**
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> If you don’t want to do something but find yourself having to do it anyway, it’s against your will. Whether or not there actually is some physical force involved (I presume that’s what you mean when you say “No one forced me to do them”), doing something you don’t want to do is doing something against your will. There is no difference.
In the real world, the distinction is not between “something I want to do” and “something I don’t want to do”, it is between “all of the options available to me”. Choosing an option which is less than ideal is equivalent to acting “against your will” to exactly the extent that your will is to live a utopian existence. Yes, I would like my life to be perfect. Since no aspect of my life is as perfect as I could possibly imagine, then by your definition every choice I make is “against my will”.
I don’t find such a definition to have much real world utility.
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> a symbiotic relationship implies that both sides are on a more or less equal footing.
No, it implies that each party receives a benefit from the relationship. There is no reason that the benefits should be “equal”.
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> \*\*theRyan: \*\*So “I can make this valuable” is more important than “I own this”?
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> \*\*Olentzero: \*\*In a nutshell, yes. From my point of view, anyway.
So shall we assume that you would happily surrender any property you own to someone who might make better use of it?
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> Strikes teach workers that they have the ability to organize and fight for what they believe they deserve, and more. Financial calculations like the ones you describe are a complete distraction from the issue of organizing. If union leaders put the nickel-and-dime calculations before the need to build a stronger, more militant union, then they ought to be replaced, and quickly.
This is true if you argue for unionization as an instrument of social change. It is not true if you argue for unionization as an instrument for improving the lives of the union’s members. In your own union activities do you take the care to explain to the members that you view their interests as secondary to your desire for social change?
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> a successful strike means that those same workers are now better able to meet their own financial needs because they’ve won higher pay (if that’s one of their demands).
While an unsuccesful strike harms the workers both materially and organizationally. Do you contend that every strike is, or should be, successful?
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> Bosses are afraid of strikes because it cuts into their profits. Workers shouldn’t be.
Why not? Strikes represent the potential for significant economic hardship to the workers, too. The possibility of success should not blind one to the costs of failure. A wise man considers both.
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> So freedom stops at the choice of career, and does not extend to the freedom to alter the conditions under which you work?
Every contract represents a restriction on absolute freedom. Why do you argue that “freedom to strike” should somehow be exempt from this voluntary acceptance of limitation?
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> A wild strawberry inherently has use-value - it can be eaten and the person gets nutrition out of it. But it doesn’t have economic value. In order for that to happen, the strawberry needs to be picked, cleaned, stored, transported to market, and put on display - all tasks that involve labor.
No. The only thing required for the strawberry to have economic value is that a human being desire to obtain it. For another human being to benefit from that value it is necessary that he be able to control or provide access to that strawberry. This might entail the labor chain you point to, or it might entail him saying, “sure, I’ll let you pick the strawberry for \_\_\_\_”. Or are you exempting property from the definition of capital?
**erl**
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> Strikebreaking does not “benefit” the company. What would benefit the company is not striking in the first place.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Once a strike has begun, strikebreaking certainly benefits the company. Before a strike, union-busting benefits a company.
**Olentzero again**
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> The value isn’t realized if no one is buying, but the value is there nonetheless because labor was used to produce it.
No. Economic value is absent when desire for teh product is absent. Items do not “store value” based upon how much labor it took to produce them.
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> Again, there are two kinds of value - economic value and use-value. Objects inherently have use-value; they can be used for one purpose or another, like creating something else, or as food.
Items can be used. This is a value only if a person wants to use them.
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> But they must be made from raw materials first - like the example of the shovel - so use-value comes from labor. Same with food. It must be grown or cultivated or fed before it can be eaten.
Except for uncultivated produce and wild animals and natural water sources and . . . The labor theory of value seems to ignore the fact that the natural world provides things that some human beings want.
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> Labor is required to make the goods to be sold, and that labor must be paid . . . goods cannot be sold for a price if they’re not made in the first place. Hence labor creates value
Labor creates teh potential for increased value. Not all labor results in increased value, and not all value stems from labor.
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### Author:  [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/46 "2001-10-05T20:38:18Z")
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> \*Originally posted by SuaSponte \*
> **In reality, everyone involved should be afraid of strikes. They are the nuclear weapon of labor relations, and the fallout can affect both sides. Back in 1988, employees at Eastern Airlines went on strike. As a direct result, the company went bankrupt and everybody - management and labor alike - lost their jobs.**
So should we blame unionized workers for striking, or should we examine an economic system that produces two classes, sets them in conflict with each other, and thus creates the potential for parts of the economy to collapse as a result of that conflict?
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> **I just think that your attitude towards them is waaaaaaay too cavalier.**
Well, I think strikes are more than just an economic tool. They can be political as well, but only if working people learn how effective they can be. And that means there is an inherent risk of failure in striking - but what social endeavor is free of that risk? Businesses fail all the time - should we therefore advocate that people not invest in businesses because they might go under and wipe out all their savings?
**Spiritus Mundi** , I’ll come back to your post later - I have to get out of work now and go pick up the Tzeroling from school.
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### Author:  [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/47 "2001-10-05T21:03:59Z")
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> \*Originally posted by Olentzero \*
> \*\*
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> > [@](#):
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> > \*Originally posted by SuaSponte \*
> > **In reality, everyone involved should be afraid of strikes. They are the nuclear weapon of labor relations, and the fallout can affect both sides. Back in 1988, employees at Eastern Airlines went on strike. As a direct result, the company went bankrupt and everybody - management and labor alike - lost their jobs.**
>
> So should we blame unionized workers for striking, or should we examine an economic system that produces two classes, sets them in conflict with each other, and thus creates the potential for parts of the economy to collapse as a result of that conflict?
In the case of the Eastern strike, we should blame the union. The unions were on full notice that Eastern did not have the money to pay their demands, and was on the brink of bankruptcy. You can’t get blood from a stone.
From case to case, the reasons for breakdowns in labor relations vary, but we should not blame the economic system. Most of us are sane - not Communists.
The “conflict” is often self-generated and -perpetuated, either by the union or by management. In my days as a union rep, I’m proud to say that I never had to file a grievance on behalf of any of the people I represented. If a problem arose, we solved it internally. In contrast, other branches of the organization I worked for were very militant. Those places had high turnover, great stress, and were generally miserable places to work.
My branch was referred to as the “country club”, and people repeatedly transferred over to my branch.
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> > **I just think that your attitude towards them is waaaaaaay too cavalier.**
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> Well, I think strikes are more than just an economic tool. They can be political as well, but only if working people learn how effective they can be.
But what if the union members, as is usually the case, don’t want to make a political statement? What if they simply want to better their economic lot in life?
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> And that means there is an inherent risk of failure in striking - but what social endeavor is free of that risk?
One takes risks when the reward is sufficiently great to justify the risk. Your attitude appears to be “take the risk of a strike because you can or should.” IMO, the correct attitude should be “take the risk of a strike when you need to.”
Sua
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### Author:  [@The\_Ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Ryan)
#### Post date: [October 5, 2001, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/48 "2001-10-05T22:32:58Z")
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> \*Originally posted by Captain Amazing \*
> Labor is the source of profit, though, because it’s labor that increases the value of a product.
That’s exactly what Olentzero said. Do you think it becomes more valid the more times it’s repeated? Labor is a source of value. It is not the only source of value.
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> I agree with Abraham Lincoln, who said
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> > Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
I don’t. I really don’t see what he was thinking. Land exists without labor. Ore exists without labor. Trees exist without labor.
Olentzero
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> Actually the reverse seems to be true to me. “I don’t want to work here anymore” means “There is no conceivable situation in which I would want to work here”. At least that’s how I meant it, and my boss took it, when I quit a bookstore job back in '98.
Unless you boss was very unusual, I am sure that there were extenuating circumstances in addition to you telling him that you wanted to quit that made him think that there was no condition in which you would rejoin.
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> But this relationship has not always existed for all of human history.
That is irrelevant.
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> It is an artificial relationship and is not a requirement for the existence of society.
It is necessary for society as we know it. Otherwise why wouldn’t workers leave it?
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> Moreover, a symbiotic relationship implies that both sides are on a more or less equal footing.
Not really. The relationship between humans and dogs is referred to as “symbiotic”, even though humans would do much better without dogs than dogs would do without humans.
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> Corporations rake in more in profits than they lay out in wages; the workers create far more value than they receive. The relationship is more akin to parasitism than symbiosis.
It is a peculiar person indeed who considers it “parasitism” to share in the profits that one has created. Should they provide use of their factories for free?
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> Workers have the right to prevent strikebreakers from entering the factory and running the machinery because it undermines their own efforts to get better wages and better conditions.
They have this right because it is in their own interests to do so? So do I have the right to steal money?
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> If stuff is getting produced and sold, then the bosses don’t need to worry about production being stopped by a strike
IOW, they don’t need the workers. Which contradicts your earlier claim.
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> A wild strawberry inherently has use-value - it can be eaten and the person gets nutrition out of it. But it doesn’t have economic value.
Why does it matter whether it has “economic value”? Labels do not change the nature of things. If the strawberry has value, then it has value. If you define “economic value” as “value created by labor”, then “economic value is only created by labor” is true, but trivially so. It doesn’t say anythng about the real world.
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### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [October 6, 2001, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/49 "2001-10-06T17:26:54Z")
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> \*Originally posted by Olentzero \*
> \*\*
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> > \*Originally posted by erislover \*
> > Strikebreaking does not “benefit” the company. What would benefit the company is not striking in the first place.
>
> \*\*
> What’s the common point between them? Workers at the machinery, producing goods for sale and thereby creating profits. Strikes interrupt the flow of production and threaten profits. Anything that goes towards stopping that interruption benefits the company.
[This goes for **Spiritus** , too] The two are not meant to be mutually exclusive; certainly from a perspective besed solely on the present condition strikebreaking benefits the company. The total scenario, however, shows that the company still lost. The only way for a company to not lose is for there not to be a strike in the first place.
If I steal fifty dollars from you, then give back ten, you did not “benefit.”
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> How are conditions proposed by the company, which are unacceptable to the union, the union’s fault?
They aren’t. As you noted, it is the union’s fault if they accept terms which they don’t like.
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> How is it their fault if they ultimately have no other choice but to accept those conditions?
I assume you mean “no viable choice” because they certianly do have a choice. Again, viability of a choice is the same for workers as it is for the company. To the company, they must acceed to workers demands if they wish to have any workers at all. To the unions, they must acceed to the company’s demands if they want their workers to live up to their name at all. Both sides are presented with unviable choices; I see that neither is to blame.
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> But if those efforts were not successful and they had to swallow an unacceptable contract, I don’t blame the unions at all.
I am not impressed by this compromise of principles. why bother accepting a contract you know you are going to break? That seems to me to make the idea of a contract worthless. It would definitely work against any trust which may have been built up by past negotiations.
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> > **The best way to “strike” against the union is to stop paying union dues.**
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> Which leaves the workers with no organization and increasingly more passive. The best way to strike against the union is to campaign for more democracy inside it and to build a rank-and-file that is not afraid to take matters into its own hands if the union leadership isn’t doing what they want.
the best way to strike against the company, then, is to work your way through the corporate ladder and change the rules. Do you see why I feel you are replacing big bad business with a big bad union?
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> I guess I don’t understand what it means to automatically hate unions, either.
Well, touché. I do not hate unions; am I to understand you don’t hate business?
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> The value isn’t realized if no one is buying, but the value is there nonetheless because labor was used to produce it. Again, there are two kinds of value - economic value and use-value. Objects inherently have use-value; they can be used for one purpose or another, like creating something else, or as food.
Would an analogy to potential and kinetic energy be appropriate here?
I am still not sure I agree with the above. Nothing, to me, has value outside of a person valuating it. If no one values a thing, it doesn’t matter what it _could_ do if someone _did_ value it.
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> But those goods cannot be sold for a price if they’re not made in the first place. Hence labor creates value.
Not by the logic in your last quote. Iron ore has inherent value. Labor did not put it there.
As I disagree with the sentiment of inherent value of material objects I cannot put forth the previous statement as my own. I simply disagre that labor creates value.
Consider, again, the $25 shovel that no one wants to buy. Was that shovel made purely for the sake of making shovels, or was it made in response to a perceived demand for shovels? Did labor still create the value if this is so, or rather was it human desires? Labor has value in the market as it produces stuff of value (else why pay for it, eh?); who “makes” labor that makes it valuable?— If labor creates value, then business make labor and have value themselves.
I am simply confused about this labor theory of value.
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> Actually, I’d rather get a union in your workplace and organize a strike for $15 an hour.
🙂
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### Author:  [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2001, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/50 "2001-10-09T19:45:11Z")
Hi all! Having seized Fort Casimir from the Dutch this weekend, I’m all refreshed and ready to continue this debate.
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> \*Originally posted by Spiritus Mundi \*
> \*\*In the real world, the distinction is not between “something I want to do” and “something I don’t want to do”, it is between “all of the options available to me”. Choosing an option which is less than ideal is equivalent to acting “against your will” to exactly the extent that your will is to live a utopian existence. Yes, I would like my life to be perfect. Since no aspect of my life is as perfect as I could possibly imagine, then by your definition every choice I make is “against my will”.
>
> I don’t find such a definition to have much real world utility.\*\*
I’m talking about the will of a group of people, not specific individuals. Leaders of groups can and have gone against what’s been decided by the group as a whole, and unions are no exception. Hence the use of the term “against [one’s] will”.
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> > [@](#):
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> > > \*\*theRyan: \*\*So “I can make this valuable” is more important than “I own this”?
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> > Olentzero: In a nutshell, yes. From my point of view, anyway.
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> \*\*So shall we assume that you would happily surrender any property you own to someone who might make better use of it?
> \*\*
Point of clarification. I’m talking about the means of production as private property, and not an individual’s personal belongings. The people who run the machinery to make goods that people can use have more of a right to own them and decide how they’re used than the people who merely run it as a source of profit.
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> **While an unsuccesful strike harms the workers both materially and organizationally. Do you contend that every strike is, or should be, successful?**
I contend that every effort should be made to ensure that a strike, once taken, ends successfully for the workers. Strikes are not a time for hesitations and half-hearted measures precisely because a failed strike is so thoroughly damaging to the workers’ finances and their morale.
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> **Every contract represents a restriction on absolute freedom. Why do you argue that “freedom to strike” should somehow be exempt from this voluntary acceptance of limitation?**
Quite the opposite! Every contract represents the workers’ push against the bosses’ restrictions. I argue that the freedom to strike should not be subject to negotiation simply because I believe it should not be.
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> **The only thing required for the strawberry to have economic value is that a human being desire to obtain it.**
OK, let’s rewind human history a couple dozen millennia and look at a Pleistocene hominid walking around a field. There is a cluster of wild strawberry bushes nearby - he sees them, and since he’s hungry he goes over and eats some of them. Where does the strawberry acquire economic value in this scenario? The Pleisto obviously desired to obtain the strawberries.
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> **For another human being to benefit from that value it is necessary that he be able to control or provide access to that strawberry. This might entail the labor chain you point to, or it might entail him saying, “sure, I’ll let you pick the strawberry for \_\_\_\_”. Or are you exempting property from the definition of capital?**
In other words, the strawberry must be subjected to a social constraint in order to have its economic value realized. Is that not the same as saying that economic value is therefore a social construct, and its existence is thoroughly dependent on the way society and the production and distribution of goods is organized?
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>
> **Economic value is absent when desire for teh product is absent. Items do not “store value” based upon how much labor it took to produce them.**
The labor power it took to make a product had economic value. The raw materials required for creating the product had economic value. They were both paid for before they were used. How does the economic value of the end product just suddenly disappear?
> [@](#):
>
> **Items can be used. This is a value only if a person wants to use them.**
If an item can be used, it has use-value. That value is only realized when the item is used, but it has use-value regardless.
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > But they must be made from raw materials first - like the example of the shovel - so use-value comes from labor. Same with food. It must be grown or cultivated or fed before it can be eaten.
>
> **Except for uncultivated produce and wild animals and natural water sources and . . . The labor theory of value seems to ignore the fact that the natural world provides things that some human beings want.**
And complete dependence on products that require absolutely no labor whatsoever puts us back to the Pleistocene again. The labor theory of value is not a Marxist invention; it was created by the bourgeois economist Ricardo to attempt to explain where value comes from as regards manufactured products.
> [@](#):
>
> **Labor creates teh potential for increased value. Not all labor results in increased value, and not all value stems from labor.**
Labor creates increased value, and thus the potential for its realization. Not the potential for increased value. Still, however, you are correct in your first assertion - the “Cool Hand Luke” scenario put forth by **pldennison** does show that not all labor results in increased value. But I would certainly like to see some proof of the second assertion.
> [@](#):
>
> _Originally posted by SuaSponte_
> **In the case of the Eastern strike, we should blame the union. The unions were on full notice that Eastern did not have the money to pay their demands, and was on the brink of bankruptcy. You can’t get blood from a stone.**
That line is nothing new. It’s an old tactic used by many a company to try to get the strike to end in their favor. It’s unfortunate that the strike brought down Eastern and threw unionized workers out of their jobs, but this incident in no lessens the importance of the strike as a workplace tactic, nor does it provide any serious argument for restricting the workers’ right to do so.
> [@](#):
>
> **we should not blame the economic system. Most of us are sane - not Communists.**
:rolleyes: It’s a little known fact that at the same time the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of disorders, they took “a desire to read and understand the Commmunist Manifesto and related works by Marx and Engels” off the list of symptoms for paranoid schizophrenia. If you don’t have anything nice to say about a person who holds views different than yours, take it to the Pit.
> [@](#):
>
> **But what if the union members, as is usually the case, don’t _want_ to make a political statement? What if they simply want to better their economic lot in life?**
Then they shouldn’t be afraid to strike in order to accomplish those goals. I’m saying that the strike can also be a political tool but arguing that in a union local isn’t going to be very effective if the rank and file don’t already realize how effective the strike is as an economic tool.
> [@](#):
>
> **IMO, the correct attitude should be "take the risk of a strike when you need to."**
And therefore the right to strike should not be bargained away in contract negotiations. Which is really my original point.
> [@](#):
>
> _Originally posted by TheRyan_
> **Labor is a source of value. It is not the only source of value.**
I’ll ask the same thing I asked of **Spiritus**. What are other sources of value?
> [@](#):
>
> **I don’t. I really don’t see what[Lincoln] was thinking. Land exists without labor. Ore exists without labor. Trees exist without labor.**
But the products made from land and trees and ore don’t. And it is those products that become commodities under capitalism and thus generate capital. Sure, at some point ownership over the trees and land and ore was asserted without labor - a European monarch saying “I possess these because I have the power to say I do” - but the land and trees and ore didn’t become commodities until the labor necessary to till, cut down, and mine was performed. There is, of course, the possible exception of land being sold from the original grantee to other purchasers, but the value of said land couldn’t increase without it being tilled or developed in some way.
> [@](#):
>
> **Unless you boss was very unusual, I am sure that there were extenuating circumstances in addition to you telling him that you wanted to quit that made him think that there was no condition in which you would rejoin.**
But it was all summed up in that nice tidy little phrase, wasn’t it?
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > But this relationship has not always existed for all of human history.
>
> **That is irrelevant.**
No, it is highly relevant. It emphasizes that human society did not need capitalism to advance to the point where capitalism became possible, and it serves as a good basis for argument that capitalism, like all other forms of society before it, are only temporary and society will not cease to advance without it.
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > It is an artificial relationship and is not a requirement for the existence of society.
>
> **It is necessary for society as we know it. Otherwise why wouldn’t workers leave it?**
1917 was the best attempt so far at doing just that. If it had been repeated elsewhere around the globe - especially Europe and the States - we’d be in a far different (and IMO, better) world by now.
> [@](#):
>
> **It is a peculiar person indeed who considers it “parasitism” to share in the profits that one has created. Should they provide use of their factories for free?**
With whom are they “sharing in” the profits? And whom are they charging for use of their factories?
> [@](#):
>
> **IOW, they don’t need the workers. Which contradicts your earlier claim.**
It does? Who’s in there running production, then?
> [@](#):
>
> **Why does it matter whether it has “economic value”? Labels do not change the nature of things. If the strawberry has value, then it has value.**
But there are different kinds of value, no? A strawberry can be eaten, irregardless of whether or not it is sold as a commodity. Does that not point to two different kinds of value?
> [@](#):
>
> **If you define “economic value” as “value created by labor”, then “economic value is only created by labor” is true, but trivially so. It doesn’t say anythng about the real world**
Use-value is also value created by labor. You have to make a shovel before you can use it to dig. Economic value comes about when you start treating the shovel as a commodity, as something to be bought and sold in order to realize a profit. But commodities cannot be bought and sold if they are not produced first, and production requires labor.
> [@](#):
>
> _Originally posted by erislover_
> **If I steal fifty dollars from you, then give back ten, you did not "benefit."**
OK, if a shoe factory worker, in the course of an hour, makes ten pairs of shoes that are later sold for $120 a pair, but is only paid $20 for that hour’s labor, who benefits?
> [@](#):
>
> **As you noted, it is the union’s fault if they accept terms which they don’t like.**
Only if the union made no attempt whatsoever to fight back against those conditions and to try to ensure that they were removed from the contract.
> [@](#):
>
> **I am not impressed by this compromise of principles. why bother accepting a contract you know you are going to break?**
We seem to be talking past each other here. My point is that I would not blame the unions for accepting a less-than-satisfactory contract if they have already exhausted all other avenues, including strikes, of forcing the company to offer a better deal. You seem to think I’m saying they should accept a lousy contract from the get-go just so they can strike over it later on. Furthermore, I do not think a no-strike clause should be part of a contract deal, because it leaves the union members at risk of later having to accept company policy decisions on issues that may not be touched upon in the contract.
> [@](#):
>
> **the best way to strike against the company, then, is to work your way through the corporate ladder and change the rules.**
Corporate ladder-climbing is an individual effort and is done at the expense of others beside and below you. A democracy campaign in a lousy union will involve larger and larger numbers of the union rank and file the more successful it is. Corporate ladder-climbing only works the more you look out for yourself. Democratizing a union only works the more people you get organized around a common goal. This is by no means replacing the “big bad company” with the “big bad union” - bosses and workers are in constant conflict with each other because of the very nature of capitalist society, and an institution which serves to organize the workers to better defend themselves in that conflict is vitally necessary. It may be a lousy union in the first place, but it’s better than no union at all.
> [@](#):
>
> **Well, touché. I do not hate unions; am I to understand you don’t hate business?**
Good question. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I guess I have to say yes, I hate business inasmuch as I detest capitalism. I think there is a better social alternative out there and it requires much more work than hieing myself off to a commune in the Pacific Northwest and cultivating kale while listening to Ravi Shankar and wearing organic hemp clothing.
> [@](#):
>
> **Nothing, to me, has value outside of a person valuating it. If no one values a thing, it doesn’t matter what it could do if someone did value it.**
A person’s subjective value of an item does nothing to affect the objective value of the materials and labor that went into it. Someone paid for the labor to extract the ore and to fell the lumber. Someone else paid for that ore and lumber as supplies, and paid more labor to smelt the ore, prepare the lumber, and assemble the shovel. Objective conditions gave that shovel use-value as well as the economic value bestowed on it by capitalism. Just because no one buys it doesn’t mean it’s not being sold for a price - you can see it on the shelf at the hardware store with a price tag on it. The value is there because it was put there by previous conditions.
> [@](#):
>
> **Consider, again, the $25 shovel that no one wants to buy. Was that shovel made purely for the sake of making shovels, or was it made in response to a perceived demand for shovels?**
Under the logic of capitalism, I’d argue that it was made because there was a real likelihood it would be sold to meet someone’s need for a shovel. That may be “perceived demand” but that’s such a nebulous term anyway.
> [@](#):
>
> **Did labor still create the value if this is so, or rather was it human desires?**
Labor still created the value. Human need drives the creation of useful tools to satisfy itself, but shovels couldn’t have a use-value until they were invented. Similarly, those items couldn’t be sold as commodities under capitalism if they hadn’t been worked on in the first place.
> [@](#):
>
> **Labor has value in the market as it produces stuff of value (else why pay for it, eh?); who “makes” labor that makes it valuable?**
The workers themselves.
> [@](#):
>
> **If labor creates value, then business make labor and have value themselves.**
Wrong. Labor has been around since the Paleolithic - in fact, I’d argue it ushered in the Paleolithic since that was when humans first used tools - whereas capitalism has only been around since the middle of the eighteenth century. Business is merely a form under which labor is organized to produce and distribute goods in order to generate profits. Labor existed previous to business, hence it can exist without business. Business appeared to organize labor in a certain way, it is predicated on the existence of labor and therefore cannot exist without it. Business does not make labor.
---
### Author:  [@SuaSponte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuaSponte)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2001, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/51 "2001-10-09T22:08:35Z")
_Mea culpa_, **Olentzero**. On the Communist and sanity crack, the smilie was implied. I realize now that the smilie should have been explicit, considering that there are people who do equate Communism and psychosis.
Sua
---
### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [October 9, 2001, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/52 "2001-10-09T23:25:07Z")
Welcome back, **Olentzero**. 🙂
> [@](#):
>
> OK, if a shoe factory worker, in the course of an hour, makes ten pairs of shoes that are later sold for $120 a pair, but is only paid $20 for that hour’s labor, who benefits?
Well, by my calculations the company is out $20 and the employee is up $20. To stick to your method of analysis we shouldn’t consider anything but the present. otherwise I remain correct that companies still lose even when people cross the strike line. Which would you prefer?
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > I am not impressed by this compromise of principles. why bother accepting a contract you know you are going to break?
>
> My point is that I would not blame the unions for accepting a less-than-satisfactory contract if they have already exhausted all other avenues, including strikes, of forcing the company to offer a better deal. You seem to think I’m saying they should accept a lousy contract from the get-go just so they can strike over it later on. Furthermore, I do not think a no-strike clause should be part of a contract deal, because it leaves the union members at risk of later having to accept company policy decisions on issues that may not be touched upon in the contract.
Well, I think I’ve said repeatedly that employees should only strike when either the things mentioned in the contract are broken, or when bad things happen which aren’t provisioned for in the contract. A no strike clause which covers striking over terms which are covered in the contract (provided the company holds up its end of the bargain) is still fine by me. If you do not think so, and you think that employees should be able to strike over things that are provisioned for in the contract _even if_ the company is holding up its end of the deal then yes, you are certainly making the contract worthless. Do you still disagree?
> [@](#):
>
> Corporate ladder-climbing is an individual effort and is done at the expense of others beside and below you.
I have never seen evidence of this in my personal life. Perhaps you should find better places to work. The number of happy people I know all over the country tell me such places aren’t very scarce.
> [@](#):
>
> …bosses and workers are in constant conflict with each other because of the very nature of capitalist society…
I simply don’t understand this. Why? I really like the three bosses I have. They are wonderful people to know personally, and even better still great people to work for. I have never stayed at a job where I didn’t like my employer. The employeer retains the option to fire me, and I retain the option to quit. If I don’t like the workplace then I excercize my ability to leave it. Why would I stay in a job I don’t like? Why would I work to improve the company who has demonstrated that it couldn’t give a shit about me?
> [@](#):
>
> It may be a lousy union in the first place, but it’s better than no union at all.
I deliberately turn down union work. I respect the need for unions. I choose to distance myself from their means of achieving their material desires.
> [@](#):
>
> Wrong. Labor has been around since the Paleolithic - in fact, I’d argue it ushered in the Paleolithic since that was when humans first used tools - whereas capitalism has only been around since the middle of the eighteenth century. Business is merely a form under which labor is organized to produce and distribute goods in order to generate profits. Labor existed previous to business, hence it can exist without business. Business appeared to organize labor in a certain way, it is predicated on the existence of labor and therefore cannot exist without it. Business does not make labor.
This avoids the issue of inherent value in things like iron ore.
Apart from that, markets are much more than capitalism. They exist in the absence of money in the form of simple barter. And at each step, it is the purchaser who places the value on goods produced for the purpose of selling. The price tag means nothing if no one is buying. consider the million-dollar lemonade stand. The price tag is there. Do you feel that is an unreasonable price for lemonade? I don’t—unless no one is buying it.
I have a question, as well. How do you quantify the value of labor? Or, in fact, do you quantify the value of labor?
---
### Author:  [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2001, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/53 "2001-10-10T16:04:42Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by SuaSponte \*
> **_Mea culpa_, Olentzero. On the Communist and sanity crack, the smilie was implied.**
No biggie. I’m terrible at reading subtle emotions such as light sarcasm over the Internet, which is why I dig smilies. They help in times of need. 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2001, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/54 "2001-10-10T16:42:38Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Olentzero \*
> \*\*
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > **Well, touché. I do not hate unions; am I to understand you don’t hate business?**
>
> Good question. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I guess I have to say yes, I hate business inasmuch as I detest capitalism. I think there is a better social alternative out there and it requires much more work than hieing myself off to a commune in the Pacific Northwest and cultivating kale while listening to Ravi Shankar and wearing organic hemp clothing.\*\*
Putting aside the image of you in organics cultivating kale while the sitar plays, isn’t it kind of overstating to say you detest capitalism? It’s just an economic system, and as far as it goes, it had some positive effects. The system of organization it created spurred economic growth, it led to the adoption of liberalism and meritocracy, getting rid of the idea that just because you were born into a noble family, you have some innate quality of leadership, it enabled the first scientific studies of the economy and its effect on society, etc.
---
### Author:  [@KellyM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KellyM)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2001, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/55 "2001-10-10T17:20:41Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by erislover \*
> \*\*Welcome back, **Olentzero**. 🙂
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > OK, if a shoe factory worker, in the course of an hour, makes ten pairs of shoes that are later sold for $120 a pair, but is only paid $20 for that hour’s labor, who benefits?
>
> Well, by my calculations the company is out $20 and the employee is up $20.
> \*\*
Really? By mine the company is up $100 and the employee is up $20.
---
### Author:  [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)
#### Post date: [October 10, 2001, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/56 "2001-10-10T17:57:30Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by KellyM \*
> \*\*
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > \*Originally posted by erislover \*
> > \*\*Welcome back, **Olentzero**. 🙂
> >
> > > [@](#):
> > >
> > > OK, if a shoe factory worker, in the course of an hour, makes ten pairs of shoes that are later sold for $120 a pair, but is only paid $20 for that hour’s labor, who benefits?
> >
> > Well, by my calculations the company is out $20 and the employee is up $20.
> > \*\*
>
> Really? By mine the company is up $100 and the employee is up $20. \*\*
Ok, the question was whether strikebreaking “benefited” the company. I said that it did only if we looked at it in the _present_. Over the whole course, the company lost from the strike, and people breaking the strike line don’t make that go away.
In this case, **Olentzero** wants me _now_ to consider temporality, because in this case it makes the worker get less than the company. but this is not correct, because I wam under the impression we should only look at the present. In an analysis that only looks in the present, the company is only out the money they paid the wroker, and the worker is up what the company made them. See?
---
### Author:  [@The\_Ryan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Ryan)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2001, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/no-strike-clauses-in-union-contracts-an-opinion/85231/57 "2001-10-13T20:35:08Z")
\*Originally posted by Olentzero \*
> [@](#):
>
> Point of clarification. I’m talking about the means of production as private property, and not an individual’s personal belongings.
So there are special rules for property that’s used in a business? Don’t you understand how arbitrary that seems? Property is property. Theft is theft. Whether or not theft is moral shouldn’t depend on what it is that’s being stolen.
> [@](#):
>
> The people who run the machinery to make goods that people can use have more of a right to own them and decide how they’re used than the people who merely run it as a source of profit.
Why?
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > **Every contract represents a restriction on absolute freedom. Why do you argue that “freedom to strike” should somehow be exempt from this voluntary acceptance of limitation?**
>
> Quite the opposite! Every contract represents the workers’ push against the bosses’ restrictions.
First of all, not every contract is better than the previous one. If by “push” you mean an _attempt_ to reduce restrictions, then you have a case. But that’s not what was being discussed; what was being discussed is whether contracts _succeed_ in reducing restrictions. And it is true that all contracts reduce freedom. Perhaps one contract restricts freedom less than another, but they all restrict freedom to some degree.
> [@](#):
>
> I argue that the freedom to strike should not be subject to negotiation simply because I believe it should not be.
So absolutely no one should promise to perform any service? All labor should be on a “if I get around to it” basis? If a group of surgeons anounced in the middle of an operation that they were going on strike and would not start working again unless they were paid twice as much, you would have no problem with that?
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > **For another human being to benefit from that value it is necessary that he be able to control or provide access to that strawberry. This might entail the labor chain you point to, or it might entail him saying, “sure, I’ll let you pick the strawberry for \_\_\_\_”. Or are you exempting property from the definition of capital?**
>
> In other words, the strawberry must be subjected to a social constraint in order to have its economic value realized.
He never said that. He said that it must be subjected to some constraint for _someone else_ to enjoy its value. Otherwise only the person that eats it enjoys its value.
> [@](#):
>
> The labor power it took to make a product had economic value. The raw materials required for creating the product had economic value. They were both paid for before they were used. How does the economic value of the end product just suddenly disappear?
I think that that was the point of the digging-the-hole-and-filling-it-in example. Labor does not have any intrinsic economic value; it is only when it is used in an economically productive manner that it obtains value.
> [@](#):
>
> And complete dependence on products that require absolutely no labor whatsoever puts us back to the Pleistocene again.
Exactly. Life above the Pleistocene level requires some sort of capital, which means that the principles of capitalism are required.
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > **Labor creates teh potential for increased value. Not all labor results in increased value, and not all value stems from labor.**
>
> …But I would certainly like to see some proof of the second assertion.
Have you been reading the thread?
> [@](#):
>
> Except for uncultivated produce and wild animals and natural water sources and . . .
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > **IMO, the correct attitude should be "take the risk of a strike when you need to."**
>
> And therefore the right to strike should not be bargained away in contract negotiations.
What if the contract is such that they won’t need to strike?
> [@](#):
>
> _Originally posted by TheRyan_
> I’ll ask the same thing I asked of **Spiritus**. What are other sources of value?
We have both already answered that question. You even quoted my answer.
> [@](#):
>
> But the products made from land and trees and ore don’t. And it is those products that become commodities under capitalism and thus generate capital.
And yet again we see the fallacy of “If A is B, then C isn’t C”. Yes, products made from natural resources are commodities. That doesn’t mean that the natural resources themselves aren’t commodities.
> [@](#):
>
> but the land and trees and ore didn’t become commodities until the labor necessary to till, cut down, and mine was performed.
So no land has ever been sold prior to it being mined or tilled or cut?
> [@](#):
>
> There is, of course, the possible exception of land being sold from the original grantee to other purchasers, but the value of said land couldn’t increase without it being tilled or developed in some way.
Well, increase of value is irrelevant to whether or not something is a commodity or not, but land does fluctuate in price due to factors independent of the land itself. When a new railrod was built, nearby land usually went up in price.
> [@](#):
>
> But it was all summed up in that nice tidy little phrase, wasn’t it?
No, I don’t think so. That’s my point; I think that if you felt so storngly about not coming back to work, then your boss probably had infromation beyond your simply saying that you quit to deduce that you would not come back.
> [@](#):
>
> No, it is highly relevant. It emphasizes that human society did not need capitalism to advance to the point where capitalism became possible,
Well, that’s a tautology. Seeing as how the point at which capitalism became possible was a rather wretched existence, I don’t see how that diminishes the importance of capitalism.
> [@](#):
>
> and it serves as a good basis for argument that capitalism, like all other forms of society before it, are only temporary and society will not cease to advance without it.
The Earth did not always exist. I do not conclude from that that it will soon disappear. Besides, the issue here is whether capitalism **should** disappear, not whether it **will**.
> [@](#):
>
> 1917 was the best attempt so far at doing just that.
And it failed miserably. Doesn’t that suggest to you that perhaps it’s not as easy as you make it out to be?
> [@](#):
>
> If it had been repeated elsewhere around the globe - especially Europe and the States - we’d be in a far different (and IMO, better) world by now.
So you think that Russia is a better place that the US and Europe?
> [@](#):
>
> With whom are they “sharing in” the profits? And whom are they charging for use of their factories?
The workers.
> [@](#):
>
> It does? Who’s in there running production, then?
The scabs.
> [@](#):
>
> But there are different kinds of value, no?
How so?
> [@](#):
>
> A strawberry can be eaten, irregardless of whether or not it is sold as a commodity. Does that not point to two different kinds of value?
No, it doesn’t. And what is the word “irregardless” supposed to mean?
> [@](#):
>
> But commodities cannot be bought and sold if they are not produced first, and production requires labor.
I have already explained why this is false.
> [@](#):
>
> We seem to be talking past each other here. My point is that I would not blame the unions for accepting a less-than-satisfactory contract if they have already exhausted all other avenues, including strikes, of forcing the company to offer a better deal. You seem to think I’m saying they should accept a lousy contract from the get-go just so they can strike over it later on.
You seem to be saying that the undion has the right to use all avenues, inclduding strikes, to get what they want, and if they don’t get what they want they have the right to lie and sign the contract with the intent of breaking it.
> [@](#):
>
> Furthermore, I do not think a no-strike clause should be part of a contract deal, because it leaves the union members at risk of later having to accept company policy decisions on issues that may not be touched upon in the contract.
If the company policy decisions affect the employees, then the company has no right to impose them. If they do, the contract is void and the issue of a no-strike clause is irrelevant. If they don’t affect the employees, then it’s none of the employees’ business.
> [@](#):
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > If labor creates value, then business make labor and have value themselves.
>
> Wrong. Labor has been around since the Paleolithic
There’s that fallacy again. Just because labor existed before business, that doesn’t mean that busines doesn’t produce labor. Lakes existed before humans did. That doesn’t mean humans don’t make lakes.
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